With his "Compassionate Conservatism" and lines like "We have a responsibility that when somebody hurts, government has got to move," it's obvious that he spent too much time listening to his daddy and not enough time listening to his daddy's boss.
If you haven't yet read Leviathan on the Right: How Big-Government Conservativism Brought Down the Republican Revolution
, I highly recommend it.
20 comments:
Tam -- this idea needs to be broadcast far and wide. I didn't have too much trouble being a Republican before religious nutism and panderers to the WalMart vote combined to make the GOP a tweedle dee alternative to statist tweedle dum.
Republicans as mere Democrat-Right is Total Fail. That's the Monopoly card cartoon of Country Club Republicans and Scrooge McDuck swimming in money that Socialists have been playing up since the 20's, it's the Bilderburger Cabal of the wealth elite, not the intellectual elite of better ideas.
There is no There, there - no Win at all.
I remember having such high hopes in January 2001. GWB made all the right noises during the campaign, but then, right out of the blocks, he sticks he nose up Teddy K's butt to get NCLB passed. Then September came along and the rest of the first term was a blur.
After re-election, he gave up all pretense of conservatism....
Sigh...
I should have paid more attention when Florence King was referring to him as "Lyndon Baines Bush" on the back page of NR back in '00.
Too bad they cremated Goldwater and scattered his ashes over the Grand Canyon.
Zombie Reagan in '12. Zombie Goldwater could have been Veep.
Regards,
Rabbit
Don't blame me. I voted for Alan Keyes in the primary in '00. :)
When GWB started the "compassionate Conservative" pitch, well, that's all I needed to know.
Ghads ... what I would give for Lizardlike uncaring Conservatism:
You'll get nothing from .gov. We'll collect enough tax to imprison lawbreakers and make a military that scares foreigners as far away as Aldebaran.
But not one thin dime for altruism.
The GOP is still clueless. They are, as we speak, complaining that the Dems wouldn't go for a bipartisan takeover of the medical industry and are instead going for a partisan one.
Bush did a bucket of dumbass things, and we wil be suffering for them for ages. Did he ever actually uncap his veto pen? The spending... jesus. Patriot act? Good lord.
On the other hand, he took the war to the terrorists. Don't know if that mitigates the other shit, but it's something. I slept fine for eight years.
Og ... he uncapped it once during his first term, at the request of the corporate sponsors of the very bill he was vetoing.
They changed their minds about punishing Murdock for buying the Chris-Craft independent TV network ( to make the FOX TV network ) when the Brit Commonwealth trade org. threatened to apply the same rules to US owned TV stations in their bailiwick.
I suspect he stopped vetoing in disgust at that point.
Well, I voted for him in '04, because there was a war on like it or not I figured we'd better be in it to win it, and because, well, John Kerry...and there was a war on. In 2000, though, I voted for Harry Browne, because I concluded that voting Tory was not how one advanced the cause of liberty, even with Al Gore lurking in the Scheldt estuary.
God I miss Reagan.
"Religous nutism"? "Wal-Mart vote"? Yeah, because shallow elitism and religous bigotry is what'll really attract Middle American voters back to the Republican Party. Besides, it's nto like the Democrats have a patent on the idea, right??
Anon,
So my choices are Big Government Jackasses or Big Government Jackasses Who Love Jesus?
If that's the case, fuck it, the country can burn for all I care.
What about Wookie Suiters Who Love Jesus? Are they okay?
Sure!
Wookie-suiters who love Jesus founded this country.
Good. There are some of us who don't want to make this country an American Norsefire. (chuckle)
George W. may have been no Reagan - but he possibly was another FDR. At least we got better SCOTUS judges this time.
(I'm terribly conflicted about FDR - on the one hand, lend-lease et al and the actual participation in WWII. On the other, the New Deal. GWB's legacy won't reach either the height of the peak or the depth of the valley, IMHO, but...)
Ah, Ian, but we already know Obama intends to be The Next FDR. And not regarding the positive things you mention.
I'll say this about Dubya - he didn't approve of bad people trying to kill us. He believed in the Malcom Reynolds Doctrine. Obama has already out-Chamberlained Chamberlain (no, not Joshua, the other one!). Old Neville only sold out the Czechs - at least he realize he had to go to the mat over Poland.
It is the dream of every democratic politician to be the political equivalent of FDR+JFK=Teh Awsome! Without, of course, realizing that FDR was at least as divisive as GWB, and JFK had to die so that his legacy could continue under LBJ.
Incidentally, I really hope that no whackjob succeeds at taking a crack at the One - Biden with the aura of the One frightens me even more than the One does.
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